You are china and I'll have that freshly printed fiver thanks



As others have said, every second customer at Primark or M&S being eastern european is making the UK look a tad healthier than it is.......once you and express/mail reader buddies have "seen them orf", you'll have to cut your own lawns and pay british sparkies to cack up your electrics...Rule Britannia and all that...wot ho!!

When american laugh at you politics, you really do have an issue

No but, you have said SO many times that the numbers that have come from the EU are too high which, if you had your way, may have meant that these people may not have been here at all

This is a very relevant point which is central to the whole debate about trade.

The reality of any trade arrangement (the EU is basically a very deeply integrated form of trade arrangement) is it involves a trade-off of some national sovereignty in order to facilitate easier trading arrangements.

When laws are aligned it makes commerce easier. We share the same rules and standards in Leeds as we do in London so trade is completely frictionless. If Leeds split off from the rest of the UK somehow and gained the 'sovereignty' to have different regulatory standards from the rest of the UK, it would pay a price in trading costs eg if Leeds permitted p1ss in its bitter, and the rest of the UK did not, then every barrel of bitter exported out of Leeds would be subject to additional checks to make sure it wasn't the stuff with p1ss in it.

So the high level question about trade is what are you willing to trade off in terms of sovereignty over your own rules, and with who. Leeds and London we agree to share sovereignty as we have a long history of being part of the same nation state, its not a problem. Sharing some sovereignty with outside countries becomes more of a problem the more rules you agree to align, but if it's a key market and worth a lot in reduced trade costs then you're willing to accept more than if it's a market you don't trade with. The EU provides much deeper alignment than any other trade block which both carries bigger trading benefits than any other trade deal in the world but also involves transferring more sovereignty away.

In practice though, a lot of peoples' positions on whether they are for or anti the EU are clouded by whether they think rules made at the EU level are more in line with their own preferences than what they think the UK government would do. The whole argument about the EU protecting workers rights is based on this - people think that the UK is more likely to be governed by Conservatives who will remove workers' rights and thus better to have the constraint on them placed at EU level to stop them doing it. It is inherently an antidemocratic argument.

The flipside of this comes when we look at doing the trade deal with the US. Although a trade deal with the US won't nearly involve the same deep integration as EU membership would, the US is very aggressive in making sure countries that sign up to trade deals with it do so on terms that are tightly controlled by the US and in the US favour, and that do constrain national governments. Typically they are very aggressive on rules around patents and intellectual property, on food and environmental standards, product safety and on drug pricing. On the issue of standards they aggressively limit the extent to which countries can introduce regulations that could rule US food/products as unsafe for purchase. They are also aggressive against labelling, they don't like you being able to clearly identify which products are produced in a particular way (that you might think are more dangerous etc).

Now this is also a real compromise on democracy, because if we sign up to a US trade deal it will bind future UK parliaments from being able to introduce safety or environmental standards that would restrict US products from the UK market. In practice the way they do this is through the ISDS (investor-state-dispute-settlement) rules which are external courts (heavily influenced/dominated by the US) through which US firms can sue a foreign government for bringing in regulations that could reduce their profits. This is anti-democratic for the same reasons that I argued before about the working rights: if UK voters elect a government that wants to bring in those safety regulations, they should be able to do it and not be blocked by the US.

Where you see an inconsistency, is where some of the Conservative Eurosceptics will stand very strongly for 'democracy' and 'taking back control' when it comes to repatriating powers from Brussels, but who would be eager to see the UK bound by a US trade deal that restricted the ability of future UK governments to regulate because they see deregulation as a good thing ideologically and would rather a future Labour UK government was constrained from bringing regulations in.

That kind of position makes sense ideologically, but we shouldn't pretend its about taking back control for UK citizens - its about political tactics to try and achieve the ends they want.

If UK politicans are really consistent about taking back control, making sure the UK isn't bound by vassalage to the EU, they will be as strident and willing to 'just walk away and trade on WTO terms' with Trump as they are with the EU.

More zero hour contracts coming up so don't be sick and forget about holidays. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/p ... 1576502501

More zero hour contracts coming up so don't be sick and forget about holidays. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/p ... 1576502501

I had to laugh at this which I saw today.

Conservative plan to raise minimum hourly rate to £10.50 was ambitious. Labour plan to increase minimum wage to £10 would lose us our jobs and send unemployment soaring.



And we wonder why all those old duffers robotically repeat the line "Labour will bankrupt the country".

Is this called "spin" or boll***S ?

I also note that Boris has indeed removed protection on workers rights, removed a commitment on some refugee children being allowed to come to the UK and interestingly removed Parliament having any say on the final Brexit deal.

It seems that democracy is only important when it suits and scrutiny has all but disappeared.

Corbyn & Co have not only lost the election but, been defeated so heavily that we now have a virtual dictatorship.

They have also removed parliamentary scrutiny of any trade deals so much for sovereignty. I regret that they are taking the vote in the North to mean they have authority to do what they want because they are now the party of the working class. This means that whatever they do, those that voted to get Brexit done are also responsible for all the other bad legislation coming the country’s way.
It easy to say they are for all but regrettably time will show they are not and based on the withdrawal bill this is coming sooner than I thought.

All those labour voters who voted blue deserve whats coming. Sorry, but that is how i feel about them now.

And let us not forget, that since that 'ambitious' promise, they've since downgraded to say that they will raise the NMW - only if "economic conditions allow."

It's just a real shame that we didn't have any empirical evidence of Boris Johnson's prior conduct, to help us work out if he was prone to lying to get what he wanted.

Len McClusky & Unite, plus Squawkbox.... no lying or smearing to see here, move on.

And, once again you are wrong.

Quote ="wrencat1873"And, once again you are wrong.'" Sorry, but you are wrong. They were found to have decimated a moderate Labour MP. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/p ... 53681.html

Quote ="wrencat1873"And, once again you are wrong.'" Sorry, but you are wrong. They were found to have decimated a moderate Labour MP. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/p ... 53681.html

Quote ="IR80"Sorry, but you are wrong. They were found to have decimated a moderate Labour MP. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/p ... 53681.html'" Great article and good on her for winning her case but, I thought that we were "discussing" the minimum wage and how the media have spun the same article in opposite directions Labour = bad, Conservative = good ? and then you chucked in some random mumblings about Len Mcliusky, which were irrelevant to that discussion and I thought that you were suggesting that they had disagreed with the minimum wage but, alas, you had gone off on one hell of a tangent. As I say, good on her if she has been libelled and then won her case but, do try and keep up or, at least keep on topic or, put some meat on the bones of your random article link.

Quote ="IR80"Sorry, but you are wrong. They were found to have decimated a moderate Labour MP. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/p ... 53681.html'" Great article and good on her for winning her case but, I thought that we were "discussing" the minimum wage and how the media have spun the same article in opposite directions Labour = bad, Conservative = good ? and then you chucked in some random mumblings about Len Mcliusky, which were irrelevant to that discussion and I thought that you were suggesting that they had disagreed with the minimum wage but, alas, you had gone off on one hell of a tangent. As I say, good on her if she has been libelled and then won her case but, do try and keep up or, at least keep on topic or, put some meat on the bones of your random article link.

The thread is titled "More Tory Lies", not about the minimum wage, I am simply pointing out that the Left lie just as much. But you will never accept it, just like you will not accept referendum results.

On this minimum wage issue I think common sense has prevailed by changing it to 'if economic conditions allow'.

The minimum wage in the UK has been a pretty impressive success, considering how when Blair brought it in the Tories and right wing media were saying it would send unemployment through the roof. We've managed to maintain it whilst having relatively low unemployment for the best part of two decades now, barring a spike after the financial crisis.

Part of the reason it's been like this is because until fairly recently, the minimum wage rate-setting was kept out of the realm of politics. The government appoints independent experts, the Low Pay Commission, which has leading labour market economists on it, they analyse the labour market across all regions and sectors and come up with a recommendation every year to government as to what is the highest minimum wage rate that could be set without risking higher unemployment.

In the past few years, first George Osborne and now Sajid Javid have got in to making these pledges about the rate at which the minimum wage will increase, regardless of whether the economy can support it. If we go in to a downturn after Brexit its going to be madness to be pushing up the minimum wage when firms are already having to lay staff off. It's far better to just say we'll follow the recommendations from the experts in the LPC and have that as your minimum wage policy.

The other point about the minimum wage is it's not as big a poverty reducer at household level as people think. A lot of the people on the minimum wage are second earners in middle-income or higher households. The lowest income households are ones where people are out of work or on part time hours or insecure/contract work, especially when they have periods between having paid work available and the benefit system is too slow moving to stop them having large periods with no income.

I support the minimum wage but it's not the key to solving the food bank problem and not worth risking higher unemployment in an arms race of who can target a higher rate.

If they claim to be the party of the working class why remove the protections granted by the EU from the withdrawal agreement. I doubt they did this to strengthen worker’s rights but those who voted for the Conservatives will deserve all they receive it is those who didn’t I feel sorry for.

I think you are wrong - this is all part of us controlling our law making - why should we be dictated to by the EU as what any of our laws should be?

We already have better workers provisions than the EU do you think eroding them is going to help the Tories win the next election? You on the left would have been very happy for Corbyn to trash the economy - doubt you would had much sympathy for those on right who voted against Labour if the result had been the other way round. You lefties know what's best for the rest of us

No we don’t but we do know that it is business that funds the Conservatives and if they want to produce inward investment then a reduction in worker’s right will be a starting point. With the current majority I doubt they care about what their new supporters think. They have previously muted the reduction in rights but whatever happens he will lie about it, I guess it depends how many continue to believe him.

Anybody who has worked in road transport will tell that workers rights ,especially for drivers, have gone down hill for the last twenty odd years ,ever since the EU Driving Time Directive came in.
The Working Time Directive re normal jobs is not all it is made out to be & in a legal sense has eroded some of the rights to breaks etc that were in force prior to the WTD.

Its business that funds the economy - if you want to produce inward investment then you need to find competitive sources of investment capital. There also needs to be a rebalancing of the council tax/business rates. Why should business bear a big chunk of these costs - business has to pay extra if they want their bins emptying!!.

The Tories have never muted a reduction in workers rights - what they have muted is a reduction in the administration of employing people - no bad thing in my view. It would be electoral suicide to reduce workers rights.

You are a very sore loser - nobody told more lies in the campaign than Labour - shame you refuse to accept that.

I completely disagree - breaks are strictly controlled and adhered to by the use of Tacho's - operators run the risk of losing their O Licence if they flaunt the rules.

Well we did have tachos before Europe became involved & maximum working days of 11 hours with up to 3 optional half hour breaks on top & no more than 2 x 10 hour drives per week.

But now because of its position on Brexit the government has to face both ways with business.

The business community has been saying for the past 3 years that their priority is to avoid additional costs of doing business with the EU: avoid tariffs, non-tariff barriers like regulatory checks and rules of origin. Hence the arguments for staying within the single market and/or customs union. Outside those there will be a lot more paperwork involved which for small businesses that can't centralise and create dedicated teams to deal with it could very quickly become prohibitive and destroy margins. For NI businesses that do trade with mainland GB this is going to be a major problem now there will be checks down that border.

The government however is taking the line that they won't listen to business on this, because the people want to leave the single market / customs union. Fair enough. But its inconsistent to take that position and then start championing slashing employment rights, consumer rights and so on, by saying it's important to help businesses and businesses fund the economy so we have to listen to them. The CBI/FBS has been lobbying much harder about not facing trade costs than they have to deregulate workers rights, consumer rights, product standards and so on!

One of the big ironies is that after David Cameron's big drive to reduce red tape for business, the largest increase in red tape could come over the next year under a Tory government because of the red tape associated with Brexit